Santander Starts Global Student Card Roll-Out

A Spanish university is for new EMV chip-cards, for ID, access and payments.

Banco Santander, has begun what will be a global rollout of EMV-compliant bank cards, a spokesperson involved with the project told BS&T.

The first implementation of the chip cards subscribing to the EMV interoperability standard is at University Politecnica Catalunya in Barcelona. "The plan to extend this to all 48 Spanish universities and ultimately to all the universities where Santander is the card issuer," Aline Borne, a spokeswoman for the card supplier, Amsterdam-based Gemalto, told BS&T.

Santander manages several million cards at 200 universities and it runs university identity card programs in Latin America, Morocco, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Santander, (Madrid; $1.23 trillion in assets) is Europe's biggest and the world's ninth-biggest bank.

Gemalto's Optelio cards offer secure chip-card payment, the ability for students to digitally sign transactions and contactless security access to university facilities.